SILENSE

OBJECTIVES

SILENSE researches acoustic technologies and develops concepts to activate and control devices by gesture, data communication and indoor positioning, exclusively based on these innovative technologies. These concepts can be used in different domains: wearables, automotive and smart home application.

RELEVANCE AND IMPACT

Humans communicate mainly with speech and body gestures. The technologies SILENSE is to develop, take the way we naturally communicate one step further: from communication between humans, to communication between humans and objects. This will become increasingly important in a IoT dominated world. The application of the developed technologies in numerous areas will bring lots of benefits to the general public, ranging from enhanced user experience to improved health and safety. A few specific examples:

• Intuitive user interface in mobile and wearable devices: user interfaces are nowadays one of the major differentiators in the mobile market. Audio sensing allows the activation and control of mobile devices without touching them. Additionally, the user will no longer suffer from a dirty (touch) screen which leads to an improved user experience and better hygiene.
• Improved hygiene by touchless control: implementation of technologies enabling touchless control of objects can lead to improved hygiene conditions in buildings, hospitals and home.
• Enhanced safety by touchless control. sound/voice activation/control of systems in the car (e.g. navigation, entertainments and climate control) and control of machinery in industrial applications.
• Enhanced security by gestural authentication. In the context of needs for stronger authentication process, gestural identification appears as a new factor, increasing the diversity, hence, the robustness of authentication scenarios.
• Enhanced quality of life for disabled persons or elderly unable to move could also take advantage of both audio and gesture recognition, and the ones suffering from hearing/talking impairment could benefit from sign language interpretation.

TECHNICAL INNOVATION

• SILENSE will develop and improve smart acoustic technology blocks on different levels - hardware, software and system - to achieve these many applications.
• SILENSE lowers the cost and energy consumption and improves the performance (directivity, fractional bandwidth, dynamic range, frequency range, sensitivity and efficiency ...) of micro-acoustic transducers.
• SILENSE develops package and assembly technology. More specifically heterogeneously and monolithically integrated arrays of micro-acoustic transducers with their supporting electronics. The project also provides dedicated low-power IC design.
• SILENSE develops smart algorithms for acoustic data communication and sensing.
• SILENSE combines voice/speech, digital sound modulation and gesture control by means of the sam transducer(s).

SILENSE CONSORTIUM

The project unifies 32 partners from 9 countries. The consortium includes large companies, SMEs and research institutes.